Requirements for Data Management and Sharing

Plan to manage your data in a way that makes meeting the eventual requirements for data management and sharing easier. Thinking about how you will collect, organize, manage, store, secure, back up, preserve, and share your data makes it easier to meet future data sharing requirements.

NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities)

NIH

The NIH requires investigators seeking $500,000 or more of direct costs in a year to include a description of how research data will be shared or why sharing is impossible, to comply with the agency’s data sharing policy.

NIJ (National Institute of Justice Data Resources Program)

NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

NSF

The NSF requires that all requests for funding contain a data management plan (DMP) of no more than two pages addressing how the proposed project will comply with the agency’s data sharing policy. This document must outline the plan for data management or a justification as to why there is no need for such a plan.

In the social sciences, there is a move for journals to endorse the Data Access and Research Transparency joint statement. Endorsers include: the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Political Analysis, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Columbia University Requirements

Responsibility: Columbia’s Retention and Access to Research Data Policy(Columbia UNI required) names the Principal Investigator (PI) of a research project as responsible for determining what data need to be retained and for setting up systems for organizing and archiving project data.

Data Retention: The Retention and Access to Research Data policy is on the website of the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research. The policy includes the following statement: “Research data must be archived for a minimum of three years after the final project close-out, with original data retained wherever possible.” Other policies and laws requiring a longer period of data retention, such as the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), may apply.

Data Ownership: Though sponsors grant research funds to the Trustees of Columbia University, usually the PI acts as steward of the research data and makes decisions on its use and distribution within the parameters of sponsor and Columbia guidelines. See the Intellectual Property section under “Obligations and Responsibilities of Officers of Instruction and Research” in the Faculty Handbook for more information on Columbia policies. Make sure you are aware of your obligations under these policies and those of your research sponsor.

Data Portability: You should not assume you can take data with you. Whether or not you can do so depends on many factors, including the status of the project and the policies of the research sponsor and Columbia. Contact Sponsored Projects Administration for more information. If you are a post-doctoral researcher, the answer to this question depends on the specific circumstances of your research. Talk to your work supervisor or contact the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs.

DMP Templates

Use these templates to help create DMPs for your proposals. The templates contain suggested items to consider; not all questions will be appropriate or relevant to all projects. To create your Data Management Plan, select the appropriate template from the list below. Most templates have five or six main sections (indicated by bold headings). We suggest that you try to address the topic of each section. You will usually find more specific questions underneath the bold headings to help guide your writing. You can:

Start by answering the questions within each section (under each section description).

After answering all the relevant questions, remove the questions, leaving just your answers.

Modify the answers into prose that makes sense as a paragraph below each Roman numeral header (include the bold text as the header to each of your sections in your Data Management Plan).

Your completed DMP will have the section headers followed by prose paragraphs describing how you plan to address each point.

If you’re looking for templates with less guidance check out the DMPTool.

NEH

NIH

Additionally, if you are working with large scale genomic data such as genome-wide association studies (GWAS), single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) arrays, and genome sequence, transcriptomic, epigenomic, and gene expression data you must also adhere to the Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) Policy. This requires both a brief description of your data sharing plan in your proposal, and a more detailed just-in-time data sharing plan. The expectations for both of these are still evolving, but you should be prepared to address the considerations listed below.

NOAA

NOAA has provided information on data sharing plans for grantees as well as some required language in the NOAA Data Sharing Plan. However, per this procedural directive, this program is under regular review for future development, and NOAA’s directive for internal data management may give some insight into the direction it may develop: